Flight Simulator
If you wanted to play Microsoft Flight Simulator to fly over the beautiful landscapes, you had to download around 170 GB of data so far. That could take the download out quite a bit and it took a while before you could finally get started. That has now changed, however.An extensive update for Microsoft Flight Simulator
The developer studio Asobo has released an extensive update for Microsoft Flight Simulator (buy now € 69.99). With this it is now "only" necessary to download around 83 GB. How the developers managed to do this is not known. The team does not reveal the tricks, but explains: "We have made some optimizations for the first full download of the title". You will now download around 700 MB, after which a launcher will start. This then reloads around 81 GB of data.However, this does not change the hard drive space that the flight simulation takes up. After unzipping the downloaded files, the Microsoft Flight Simulator still occupies about 150 GB on your hard drive.
The update brings other interesting new features with it. For example, the data bandwidth of the weather data is reduced. This should lead to a better performance of the game. However, the weather data remains the same and you still get to see the exact weather that is currently in the world. Bug fixes, changes to the navigation and aircraft are also included. However, there is also a warning: If you play the VR version of Microsoft Flight Simulator, you must currently expect some crashes.
Source: PCGamer
'Microsoft Flight Simulator' shrinks initial install size from 170GB to 83GB
If you're thinking about diving into the latest ultrarealistic version of Microsoft Flight Simulator, then Kotaku points out that it will be easier now for one simple reason: the game's initial install is a lot smaller. At launch, installing the game could take up 170GB on a hard drive, but notes on the most recent patch mention that optimizations have cut it down to merely 83GB.
That's probably welcome news to anyone with a bandwidth cap they're trying not to go over or who wants to squeeze the game onto an SSD for better performance. It's unclear what they did to save space, but we have to assume that deleting that 212-story tower in Australia was worth a few hundred megabytes.
It's also a good sign for the upcoming Xbox Series X/S port, assuming you'd like to install it on your console without uninstalling every other game you're playing. Even if you've snagged Seagate's 1TB expansion drive, space is at a premium after loading Call of Duty, Halo: Master Chief Collection, Gears 5 and Red Dead Redemption 2, plus a few other Game Pass titles you might want to play sometimes.
Speaking of the Xbox port, the notes not-so-coincidentally also mention new documentation added that relates to the console version. The SDK now includes some best practices to help developers adapt their add-ons for use on Xbox, plus some samples to illustrate model optimization for use on Xbox. In a developer Q&A this week, Microsoft Flight Sim head Jorg Neumann declined to give a release date for the Xbox version, joking that Phil Spencer would kill him, but did mention that a decision on a beta will likely come in the next few weeks. What he could say now, is that along with the Xbox version, there will be a new PC build released with additional optimizations included and system rewrites.
© Asobo Studio Microsoft Flight Simulator